Author: Jake

Friend of the ‘Lab, Kathy, has been using Storify for a while now to compile easy-to-consume, erm, stories about the exploits of Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps). You might remember Storify from past stories such as the In the U.K.: Special events and Apps 14 with UKOUG and Our OpenWorld 2014 Journey. Anyway, Kathy has a new… Read More

Maybe you remember Busytown, Richard Scarry’s famous town, from your childhood or from reading it to your kids. Tony Ruth has created the Silicon Valley equivalent, BusinessTown, (h/t The Verge) populated by the archetypes we all know and sometimes love. What do the inhabitants of BusinessTown do? “What Value-Creating Winners Do All Day,” natch. Who’s up… Read More

Our team has been busy since the New Year, competing in the AT&T Developer Summit hackathon, which is Noel’s (@noelportugal) Everest, i.e. he tries to climb it every year, see 2013 and 2014. If you follow our Twitter (@theappslab) or Facebook page, you might have seen the teaser. If not, here it is: Look for… Read More

Noel (@noelportugal) spent a lot of time during his holidays geeking out with his latest toy, Amazon Echo. Check out his initial review and his lights hack. For a guy whose name means Christmas, seems it was a logical leap to use Alexa to control his Christmas tree lights too. Let’s take a minute to shame Noel… Read More

If you read here regularly, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of the Google Chromecast. It’s helped me cut the cable, I gave it as a Christmas gift two years in a row (to different people), I have several in my home, and I carry one in my laptop bag to stream content on the… Read More

Noel (@noelportugal) is one of a handful of early adopters to get his hands on the Amazon Echo, Amazon’s in-home personal assistant, and being the curious, hacker that he is, of course he used an unpublished API to bend Alexa, that’s the Echo’s personality, to his will. Video, because it happened: And look, Noel’s hack got picked… Read More

It’s difficult to make a link post seem interesting. Anyway, I have some nuggets from the Applications User Experience desk plus bonus robot video because it’s Tuesday. Back to Basics. Helping You Phrase that Alta UI versus UX Question Always entertaining bloke and longtime Friend of the ‘Lab, Ultan (@ultan) answers a question we get a… Read More

As a team-building activity for our newly merged team of research, design and development, someone, who probably wishes to remain nameless, organized a glass mosaic and welding extravaganza at The Crucible in Oakland. We split into two teams, one MIG welding, the other glass breaking, and here’s the result. All-in-all an interesting and entertaining activity.… Read More

Editor’s note: Here’s a repost of a wonderful write-up of an event we did a couple weeks ago, courtesy of Friend of the ‘Lab Karen Scipi (@KarenScipi). What Karen doesn’t mention is that she organized, managed and ran the event herself. Additional props to Ultan (@ultan) on the idea side, including the naming, Sandra Lee (@SandraLee0415)… Read More

There’s a post over on VoX about a OAUX new lab at Oracle HQ, the Cloud UX Lab. Finished just before OOW in September, this lab is a showcase for OAUX projects, including a few of ours. The lab reminds me of a spacecraft from the distant future, the medical bay or the flight deck. It’s… Read More

Jawbone announced the Up3 today, reportedly its most advanced fitness tracker to date. As with all fitness trackers, the Up3 has an accelerometer, but it also has sensors for measuring skin and ambient temperature, as well as something called bioimpedence. As these data collected by the Up3 are used by a new feature called Smart Coach. You… Read More

If you’ve read here for more than a hot minute, you’ll know that I love me some data visualization. This love affair dates back to when Paul (@ppedrazzi) pointed me to Hans Rosling’s (@hansrosling) first TED talk. I’m sure Hans has inspired an enormous city of people by now, judging by the 8 million plus… Read More

Cheesy title aside, the AppsLab (@theappslab) is growing again, and this time, we’re branching out into new territory. As part of the Oracle Applications User Experience (@usableapps) team, we regularly work with interaction designers, information architects and researchers, all of whom are pivotal to ensuring that what we build is what users want. Makes sense, right?… Read More

Last week at OpenWorld, a few of our projects were featured in Steve Miranda’s (@stevenrmiranda) keynote session. Jeremy (@jrwashley) tweeted the evidence. Debra (@debralilley) noticed too. I wasn’t able to attend the keynote, so I found out thanks to the Usable Apps (@usableapps) Storify, which chronicled “Our OpenWorld 2014 Journey.” And today, I finally got… Read More

This time next week, we’ll be in the thick of the Oracle super-conference, the combination of Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne. This year, our team and our larger organization, Oracle Applications User Experience, will have precisely a metric ton of activities during the week. For the first time, our team will be doing stuff at JavaOne too. Anthony (@anthonyslai)… Read More

Noel (@noelportugal) and Raymond have been hard at work building a custom wearable, a.k.a. the secret OpenWorld project. The finished product is ready for a closeup. The components are: AppsLab Slapbands from Amazing Wristbands (@AMZG_Wristbands) LightBlue Beans from Punch Through Design (@punchthrough) 3D-printed cases, designed by Friend of the ‘Lab Rob, printed by Sculpteo (@sculpteo) LED lights An… Read More

Tony went to a talk by Salim Ismail (@salimismail), the Founding Executive Director of Singularity University recently. He may/may not post his thoughts on the talk, which sounds fascinating, but this video is worth sharing either way, and not just because we have quadcopter fever. Yeah, that’s autonomous flight, So refer to the list of horrifying things… Read More

I consider these types of posts to be filler, but I suppose you could look at it as curated content or something highbrow like that. Take your pick. 10 Horrifying Technologies That Should Never Be Allowed I scanned this post first, thought it would be interesting and left it to read later. Then I read it,… Read More

To no one’s surprise, Apple announced the Apple Watch today. Very apropos because I just read Sandra Lee’s (@SandraLee0415) post over on Usable Apps about fashionable tech, one of Ultan’s (@ultan) main talking points about wearables. Ultan, our wearables whisperer, has style and flair; if you’ve ever met him, you know this. His (and Sandra’s)… Read More

As the parent of a toddler, I have no choice but to pay attention to Disney and its myriad of products and services. Case in point, this Summer we took our daughter to Disneyland for the first time, which was a whole thing. Pause to h/t Disneyland expert, Friend of the ‘Lab and colleague Kathy for… Read More